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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: A Conspiracy of Really Smart and Really Evil Demons While I have no doubt there exist miniscule conspiracies that involve two or three guys dumping Jimmy Hoffa in a swamp, I also have no doubt there do not exist unbelievably, indeed impossibly complex conspiracies that involve two passengers planes being remote-controlled into skyscrapers (which have remote-controlled explosives in them) while a missile hits the Pentagon and another missile hits another plane. Yet, these kinds of conspiracies have been around since, oh, the day human race showed up. I'm sure the conspiracy stories thousands of years ago were doozies, just as they are today: "See that tribe over there? Their witch-doctor sent a tornado right through teepees last night. Let's go rub all of them out." The best conspiracy story I encountered recently is the one in which Joe Kennedy (the father) okayed the hit on both his sons, John and Bobby. Before that, it was the one about how the Titanic and its sister ship, the Olympic, were switched so the Olympic would go to the bottom and the owners get the insurance money. Why do people believe such wackiness? Such conspiracies are clearly nonsense, ones that have zero proof and are almost completely divorced from reality, yet many people still suspect they are true. Some are convinced they're true, and end up spending 40 years trying to prove there were three shooters triangulating on Kennedy. And 40 years from now, there will be people with 30 books and several boxes of papers, fanatically convinced there was a satellite or a helicopter that took over those two planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center (I wonder how many of them will ever find out that idea was the plot of the first episode of The Lone Gumen, the spin-off of the X-Files, which came out several months before 9-11?). All these conspiracy stories look different on the outside, but there is a core story all have in common: there exist incredibly brilliant and purely evil people who are responsible for most of the problems in the world. They go by many names: the Illuminati, the Masons, British bankers, or, if you want to believe David Icke, blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian space aliens (I might have fallen for that one except when he claimed Kris Kristofferson was one). But underneath all of these stories, there remains that one core story. I remember an anthropology class in college, where the instructor told us in some primitive tribes the members don't believe anyone dies of disease or accident -- there are witches who've cast spells on them. Those witches, of course, have to be ferreted out and killed. Talk about everyone being paranoid. I know such an idea sounds preposterous to us, but it's still an example of that core story: brilliant and evil people are the ones who did it! It's no different than Europeans or Americans who thought witches existed, ones who hexed people. A lot of them ended up burned at the stake. Since more than one "witch" was immolated (there were thousands), obviously the people during that time thought they were dealing with a conspiracy. That same belief in witches and witchcraft exists today, only those "witches" have advanced technology instead of magic, and fly airplanes instead of brooms. But it's still the same core belief: it was done by those evil, brilliant people. Heartless, cruel people, motivated solely by the lust for money and power. Usually, they want to conquer the world, like that little big-headed mouse, Brain, of Pinky and the Brain. The people who believe in these impossible conspiracies will be loath to admit they're the same kind of people who, several hundred years ago, believed witches really existed and cast spells on people. But they are, whether they can admit it or not. They believe in a conspiracy of corporeal demons. They're also examples of that curious, indeed almost unconscious belief, that evil is smarter and more powerful than good. No one believes in a conspiracy of good people attempting to do good things to the world. It's always evil people, and they're never dumb. They're not even smart. They're Mad Scientist brilliant. Why are they no Totally Sane Scientists involved in a conspiracy to put the world right? They're always mad, brilliant and evil people doing terrible things. Nobody would believe in a conspiracy of Really Nice, Really Smart Guys Doing Good Things. But they'll believe in some guy with wild hair going "BWHAHAHA!!" It doesn't say much about people, that they believe such things, not when in the past it led to innocents having firewood ignited at their feet while they're strapped to a pole. Religion has it right: people are asleep, hypnotized. That sleep-walking can lead at time to some truly depraved behavior. The first guy I met who truly believed in conspiracies was a religious nutcase who thought that he, and only he, understood what the Bible meant. He was convinced the Catholic church was the anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon, and since he had discovered the truth about the church, he told people the Pope had sent assassins to rub him out. He was totally rational in his own way, but completely deluded. He was also, not surprisingly, "writing a book," one he has been working on for about 25 years. In his mind everything was very simple: there were bad people who were responsible for most of the problems in the world, and then there were the good people (which basically meant him and anybody who agreed with him) who had turned the tables and discovered the plot. He was the ultimate conspiracy buff, who, if he ever gained political power over people, would probably go completely grandiose and paranoid and therefore would really be insane. It was from my deluded aquaintance that I realized that the fixed belief in these massive, complex conspiracies is a kind of narcissistic mental illness: there are brilliant and evil people who are responsible for most of the badness in the world, and I, in my intellectual superiority to them, have grandiosely figured them out. Even if I don't have any proof. But what about people who aren't as nearly as crazy as my crazy friend? The same applies to them as it does to him, only in lesser degree: there are brillant and evil people responsible for our problems...only they're not sending godly gunsels to rub me out. The paranoia is far less. And thank goodness for that. On that lesser scale, I'd say the more powerless people feel, the more horrible things that happen, the more they are prone to belief in conspiracies. "Conspiracies and urban legends offer meaning and purposefulness in a capricious, kaleidoscopic maddeningly ambiguous, and cruel world. They empower their otherwise helpless and terrified believers," writes Dr. Sam Vaknin. People believe in conspiracy theories because of a deep-seated need to make sense of major events in terms of major causes. They want to impose order and pattern on a sometimes chaotic world. Vaknin's comment about the sometimes capricious and cruel world means the archetype of the horror story is relevant: evil invaded by good; order attacked by chaos. A belief in major, impossible conspiracies is the belief in Godzilla-sized monsters attacking the order of society, and our lives. Since some people see these conspiracies everywhere, they become paranoid. They exaggerate the threat; they give people evil qualities that they cannot possess, only demons and monsters. Hence, the belief in astonishing brilliant and astonishingly evil conspirators. Since people believe in monsters, they seek a hero to save them. Usually this requires giving the "hero" qualities of goodness, intelligence and bravery he doesn't possess. His "goodness" and "intelligence" and "nobility" is exaggerated almost as much as conspirators' evilness. Perhaps in children's fairy tales heroes and monsters can be like this, but not in real life. Sometimes, the "hero" can be utterly incompetent, or even a catastrophe, as in the case of Hitler. Let's sum it up: the belief in impossibly complex conspiracies is the belief in monsters, in witches, in demons. It's the belief in a grandiose hero to save us. It's the belief that goodness is always under attack by evil, even if it's not. It's the belief in exaggeration and therefore paranoia. It's the belief that, underneath all the complex conspiracies, those involved can be defined in simple good-or-evil terms. The belief in conspiracies does do good whatsoever in dealing with the real problems in the world. It diverts people's attention into blaming that which is blameless and trying to prove that which cannot be proved. Were I a dictator, I would be consistently churning out propaganda, diverting attention from me toward innocent people. Nothing like an innocent scapegoat to cover the guilty's butt. Vincent Bugliosi, the author of Helter Skelter, referring to the Kennedy assassination, said the belief in these kind of impossible conspiracies is "poison." He's right; that's exactly what it is. Poison, that can obsess and ruin people's lives.
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